


Flatline

by junkienicky



Category: Orange is the New Black, oitnb
Genre: Addiction, Canon-Based, Child Neglect, Divorce, Drug Abuse, F/F, Heavy Angst, Homophobic Language, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, POV Female Character, Pre-Canon, Private School, referenced sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-07-11 13:35:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15973376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkienicky/pseuds/junkienicky
Summary: Past instances that lead to Nicky's path of destruction.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note:** I've been looking forward to starting this for a while and am really excited about starting this. With more details on Nicky's past looming around this season, I couldn't wait to explore more of her younger self and what may have lead her to troubled teen years and adult life. It won't be all doom and gloom, although it may get heavily angst. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

**April 1991**

The car journey home was something of self-inflicting. But it wasn’t all out of personal fault or interest, at least, that’s what a little eight year-old Nicky, sat on the back right passenger seat thought, while she was left anxiously overhearing her obnoxiously loud parents’ conversation. Debate. Argument. A mixed bag of the three.

“I don’t understand. Fighting? Last week it was pulling that other girl’s hair, just for calling hers scruffy in fitness class – I mean, she has a point.” Marka’s neck turns to sharply eye Nicky. “That Hebrew teacher, what was it, Steward something? Thinks she’s possessed. Too much to cope with, or something, I mean, I said don’t think I haven’t considered…It’s like she doesn’t care how this makes us or even herself look. Mind you, when she was four, I heard her humming The Addams Family theme song—”

“Yes, yes, I am hearing you, just like I did for the last five times, Marka, honey! But I am reminding you that I have an important meeting at one-fifteen, it is now one-ten. Nicky, I’ll drop you off on the corner of the street, we can resolve this…Ridiculous issue later.” Les Nichols rambled aimlessly. He took a stern glance in the rear-view mirror at his daughter while drumming on the steering wheel, frustrated. Before he stared back onto the cluster of traffic and ambience of distant beeps.

“She got what was coming to her. I’m not the one who deserved getting into trouble.” The small strawberry blonde grumbled, sitting on her hands.

“Young lady, you don’t get to decide who deserved what. We had to leave work just to come and get you!” Her mother argued. “Jesus, how do you think this makes me look?” Her daughter’s eyes softened apologetically.

“But mommy, Paloma said if people make fun of me I should stand up for myself. That’s what I thought I was doing.” Marka let out a harsh scoff and folded her arms.

“Paloma doesn’t know what’s she’s talking about. I don’t even know why we’ve kept her around, you’re getting too old for a nanny now.”

“Oh, come on Marka, having a nanny is good for her, we don’t always have to be home when she is, it’s educational for her—”

“Well, if you want to keep paying for her then be my guest, but clearly she’s influenced Nicole to start attacking people at school just because someone wants to call her a name. God, if this is what she’s like now at elementary, what is she going to be like by the time she’s teenager? And JI already sound fed up with her as it is. I know they tell mothers to look out for the terrible twos, but this….”

Her mother’s rabbiting pressed on but seemed to fade to the depth of her mind when she resorted to take her wonder and gaze to the outside world. Most of the skyscrapers of the Big Apple became distorted through the specs of tiny lenses, as fat to jotted speckles of rain began to splatter the pane of glass that her eyes could _just_ manage to reach. She knows it wasn’t right, but why was it right for Jessica Powell to make fun of her? And for everyone else to laugh, and for teachers to soothe Jessica when she herself _hardly_ even touched her?

_Why do adults…_

She strained to think of a word.

 _Contradict!_ Yes, that suited them. She’d recalled the adjective from last week, while Paloma read her a story and stopped to define several. Sometimes she felt like she’d annoy her. But baby books are for babies, and ones written for older people are far more interesting, she’d decided.

The point was, little Nicky felt almost tricked. She would take back the push, if she could. And maybe Jessica would take back the name-calling. Or maybe not. She was undecided.

Her ears and focus perked back to the sound of Les speaking. “So, what are we doin’? Leaving her at Pete’s later?”

To that she felt herself shift unevenly. Now, she understood people as individuals have their own personalities. No one is the same and everyone is different. This applies to adults too, and while most seem to blend in with the super ordinary, boring, fun and extravagant amounts of adults she’s come across in her life, from her parents, to random people walking past in the park. Uncle Pete was a character she couldn’t quite…Determine. He seemed out of the ordinary and unpredictable in ways that she couldn’t really explain. It was more of a feeling. But not a good one. A weird one. A feeling that made her feel…Uneasy. The word ‘deranged’ sprang to mind. Another word she’d looked up in a battered-up dictionary last week. Perhaps that word would appropriately define his characteristics. She often wondered if her parents or cousins noticed too.

Marka sighs, “looks like we’ll have to. I already have to spend the rest of the day with her, besides, I’m meeting Aubrey tonight, anyway.”

The car stops by a sidewalk and Nicky and Marka unclip their seatbelts and exit the vehicle. Les rotates his body towards his daughter before she closes the door. “I’ll pick you up at four, and then you’re going to Uncle Pete’s house. No more screwing around at school and apologise to your mother.”

“Okay.” Nicky says, dryly. She shuts the door and the car diverts around the corner quick as light. As the two approach the front door, and Marka fumbles around in her handback for the key, the small blonde’s eyes begin to well up. Her mother just sighs at her sniffling and barely meets eye contact with her own child.

“Nicole, this isn’t worth blubbering about. Next time that girl, or any of her friends decide to pick on you, the best thing you can do is ignore them. Then you won’t make a show of yourself in class and give me and your father a headache.” They enter the hallway and make their way to the kitchen where Marka tosses her handbag onto the countertop.

“I’m sorry, mom.” She sobs, dropping her school bag onto the tiled floor. The mother takes her coat off, wafts some stands of her hair behind her shoulder and shakes her head before she finally looks at Nicky. A tint of un-consensual sympathy somehow manages to meet her orbs

“Just…Don’t do it again. You’re already giving us a bad reputation at that school as it is. Go on, go upstairs, get out of your uniform and…Draw or something?” She stammers, unmindfully coming up with a random activity on the spot. “I’ve got phone calls to make.”

Little Nicky complies. She drags her school bag with her, uses the cuff of her blazer to wipe away tear stains on her cheeks, but is still left wondering

_What makes this all my fault?_


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe he was proud of her. Even if he was sat there smugly or like he was about to doze off. The point was, her dad had actually decided to sit there with his child and look interested. Not against his will or because he felt that it was his obligation. He was really, properly there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author's Note:** It's been a while, but here is the second part. Thank you Lutefiskfisk, you're the best!

**November 1994**

“Nicole, we’re not leaving yet, we just got here.”

Nicky had finally found her in the kitchen of Uncle Ray and his precious son’s beloved home. She was holding on to a glass of most likely a white wine, taking swigs of it now and then as she rambled on and fake laughed, closely pressed against Ray. It was probably him who had boasted about his fine selection of exquisite beverages and offered her half the bottle, if not the whole thing, only a half hour ago. _Fruity_ , Nicky thought. Not the taste of the wine, although she had tried some the last time she was in Spain on vacation and left alone in the hotel room. Why let it entirely go to waste? But it wasn’t nice. Not on the taste buds of a nine-year-old, and probably not now. She’d expected it would taste more like the gums. Neither the white nor red did.

_“Of course, Ray, that fruity bastard, would say something like that…”_ Nicky remembered her mother’s half-hearted complaint about something she didn’t care for the extent of, in some cringy way of putting it. And yet here she was, laughing out loud at every little thing, slurping up words of nonsense and even getting a little touchy-feely here and there.

The two broke apart sluggishly, as if they’d rather not become a show than hide their weird new intimacy from the small child in front of them. The small child that was, in fact, the daughter of one of them, not that it held much significance in either mind.

“We got here four hours ago,” Nicky corrected, getting rapidly impatient in waiting to be taken seriously by anyone in this family. This time, Marka looked at her, only it was more a look of intolerance than an act of communication. She gently pushed back a wave of her perfectly curled hair as if it was being insured for any damage, and then took another swig from the glass she kept hold of.

Ray stood awkwardly, unsure whether to stick his hands in his blazer pockets, fold them or walk away entirely. Instead, he stood there with a smile towards Nicky. A smile that looked all too smug and condescending like he was going to kneel down, pat her on the head and offer her a piece of candy as if she were five, not eleven. The small blonde suppressed a scowl.

Marka exhaled sharply. “Nicky, why don’t you get some more juice, or go play with Adam, or go sit with…your father.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want juice, Adam won’t let me go on the Nintendo with him and dad left over an hour ago.” At that, Marka grinned thinly at the riddance of his irritable  presence.

Her soon-to-be ex-husband was no grafter and certainly no family man, but he was a piece of work who had his fingers in many pies. First, only last year, there was Emily. Lean, gentle, twenty-something and red-haired Emily Pickford. She was an aspiring new music teacher and Nicky was her third student that signed on. She taught, or spent most lessons encouraging Nicky to at least try and play by ear. An hour is only an hour, but seventy-five dollars are, well, seventy-five dollars. It’s not that Emily ever silently complained about that. The bills were getting paid, and where there’s students, there’s revision to put that music degree of hers to good use.

It was just… Nicky never found interest in the dos and don’ts of playing, as well as music sheets, and any black or white key on the piano. Her appreciation of Mozart, or Beethoven’s historical pieces _(even despite the hidden pride Nicky felt in herself when **almost** perfecting ‘In the Hall of The Mountain King’)_ didn’t ever occur. Maybe she expected it to, eventually, because it had to… Because her father was always present. Watching her play, even if it was just her mindlessly mashing the keys out of boredom. And there _must_ be a reason for that, surely?

Maybe he was proud of her. Even if he was sat there smugly or like he was about to doze off. The point was, her dad had actually decided to sit there with his child and look interested. Not against his will or because he felt that it was his obligation. He was really, properly _there._

Emily always assumed Nicky had begged her poor parents for lessons, like her two previous students. Except she quickly realised that wasn’t the case.

At the time, Nicky was eight. Day camps, art classes and karate she’d grown out of and without a daytime hobby or club for her to ass around in, that meant poor Les was stuck with her for a few hours until Marka returned from work. Their only child. _And yet, so much hassle,_ he begrudgingly thought. He forgave himself immediately for thinking that. After all, he was convinced there were lot of things he was good at. Cases, the law, people, money-management and possibly, _probably_ , women. Children were and will not ever be his forte. He just… ended up with this one accidentally.

Except when he made a move on Emily, it didn’t land too well. She shrugged it off uncomfortably and suggested that the unprofessional connection they’d developed wasn’t in Nicky’s best interest. Les accepted that, albeit begrudgingly, and felt utterly irked and displeased when Marka had somehow managed to sniff it out. Ever since then, she’d developed some kind of peculiar bond with his brother, Ray. Not in her personal interests, but as a way to stab back her bitterness in Les’ direction at every angle possible.

Marka scoffed, still feeling the small blonde scrutinise her. “What do you want me to say, Nicole? If you’re bored, then find something to do. You don’t need me to look after you all the time.” Marka regarded her daughter with complete frustration and leaned heavily into her with a glare that could kill.

Nicky felt like the runt of the family. Nothing but an annoyance. A little shitbag that was too much to bother with. She felt stunned and turned on her heels to stomp away.

“Sorry, kid,” she heard Ray chuckle. Her head snapped back to see their lips meet and tongues grossly dance around in each other’s mouths.

“Fucking pigs,” Nicky quietly grumbled and marched her way into the living room to demand her turn on the Nintendo.


End file.
